How to Manage Your Day Like a Boss: Step by Step Guide

One eye on the clock and fingers typing away furiously at the keyboard you wish you could wind up your day by six every day. And that you could manage your day better.

You are afraid you will have to again work for a couple of hours at night after everyone has gone to bed to finish pending tasks.

You fear that at this rate you will have to miss the catchup with your girlfriends this weekend.

If only you could schedule your day like you owned it. You close the laptop screen with a sigh and get up to cook something for evening snacks.

If you want to manage your day like you are the boss of your own time, don’t fret. It’s not really rocket science and I am going to give you the step-by-step process you need to follow.

Step 1. Track your time before you manage your day.

If you are still with me, I can safely assume that for you the day passes in a whiff and you do not know where you are spending or even wasting it. 

That is why, the first step in learning to manage your day like a boss is to track your time. 

Create a spreadsheet with blocks of 30 minutes, starting with the time you typically get up, and record your activities a bit descriptively. For instance, don’t just write “work.” Write “meeting with client X” or “networking on LinkedIn.” Do not just write “shopping.” Write “shopping for groceries” or “shopping for kiddo’s school supplies.”

Do this for a week and you will know where your time goes. Make a note of things that you can eliminate if you have more pressing or important things to finish. 

These are the time slots that need to be managed better.

Step 2. Set your SMART goals.

Select the important buckets of your life and set goals for the next month. You can move to setting quarter or annual goals once you master this. Typically people set their professional, financial, relationship, self care, and health goals to start with. 

Take care to write them down in a place where you can refer later.

Ensure that your goals are SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time bound. If you don’t set SMART goals, you will find it that much more difficult to accomplish.

Break down the larger goals 

Looking at these goals you will realise you cannot accomplish them in one go. 

You need to break them down into smaller tasks that are more easily doable. Set milestones for each of those smaller tasks so that you can measure your progress.

Step 3. Create a SuperList of tasks.

You don’t need to complete only the tasks you created in Step 2. As you know, many more tasks keep cropping up that must be accommodated in the calendar to ensure you manage your day like a boss.

Before you start forgetting which tasks you need to complete, note them down in a SuperList – a list of both personal and professional tasks. I keep them together because it’s me who has to complete all of them, whether they are personal or professional. 

Step 4. Prioritise tasks to be done.

Set a priority for all the tasks on a scale of 1-5 or 1-3, whatever you feel comfortable with, where 1 is the highest priority task and 3 or 5 is the lowest. You can set the prioritisation scale on the basis of parameters like:

• Whether the task has a deadline
• Category of tasks because some things like medical emergencies or needs of your toddler take precedence over everything else.

You will observe that these are very subjective parameters and typically vary for every person. As you get into the habit of prioritisation and re-prioritisation, you will get better at it.

Try to finish the priority 1 tasks before moving on to priority 2. But you have only 24 hours in a day, and different parts of the day suit different types of tasks, so that might not always be practical. 

Start doing it and you will find your footing little by little.

Step 5. Batch tasks essential to manage your day.

When you get distracted, you typically take more than 23 minutes to regain your focus. When you move from one task to another, you take longer to change your mindset.

It makes sense to batch similar tasks together. Sometimes it is better to do this logistically as well.

For instance you can respond to all your emails together. Or schedule prospect calls back to back so that you are in that mindset to convert your leads. When you go to the market, it makes sense to do all the shopping, whether it is grocery, stationery or clothes. Saves you tons of time, money and effort in visiting the market again and again.

Step 6. Block time in the calendar.

This follows automatically from step 5. When you batch tasks, block time in your calendar for doing those batches of tasks. 

Alternately, you can block personal and professional time in the calendar and then put in which tasks you can do when. Include batched tasks together to optimise your productivity.

Step 7. Always keep buffer time.

When you’re scheduling time in your calendar, keep buffer time between two slots. 

This gives you enough mindspace to shift gears when you are moving from one task to another. Also, if you need more time to finish the first task, you can do so without delaying the next one. 

If you need more than the buffer time, think of scheduling the rest of the task to some other day. If you are in flow and do not want to break it, you can continue doing it but reschedule the next task first.

Your decision to reschedule would be easier if you have prioritised the tasks first. Rescheduling a lower priority task becomes a no-brainer. 

And if both the tasks are of the same priority, you will have to depend on your own judgement at the moment.

Step 8. Schedule every day.

Just scheduling batched tasks or blocking the calendar is not sufficient. You must schedule every single day in your calendar (maybe barring holidays and vacations of course) to ensure you are not letting any time go unused. Or rather, put to better use.

Believe me, you don’t want to miss out on an hour of free time just because you were mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed. 

Step 9. End your day by planning for the next day.

The last thing that you do every day must be to open the calendar for the next day and see if you have made optimum utilisation of all the hours available to you. 

This will save you lots of time and headache when you start working tomorrow. Rather than wasting time thinking about what to do next, you can straightaway start working with a fresh and rejuvenated mind. 

When you do not know what you must be doing next, you also tend to procrastinate.

5 tips to help you manage your day like a boss

I have suggested here the nine steps you must follow to manage your day and control your time. Here are a few tips to help you along the way:

• Eat the frog: Try to do the most challenging task first day in the first hour of your work day. When you accomplish something difficult, you feel energised the whole day. Also when you are starting your day, your mind is right to focus arable to focus better.
• Use templates: Having templates for everything to work faster. Create templates for repetitive tasks such as email responses (both personal and professional), social media content, social media images, etc.
• Use a single list – I call it the super list – for personal and professional tasks. This ensures you do not miss out on the important ones, whether personal or work related.
• Use Apps – For whatever things you can. The first things that come to mind are calendar apps, time tracker, project management apps and G suite for creating templates. 
• Be kind to yourself – Time management is a very personal thing. Your challenges as well as capabilities are unique to you. Give yourself time to start following these steps and refining them as you go. Remember that self care must come together with productivity.

What next

Imagine it’s Friday 5 pm and you are putting final touches to a client proposal the marketing team requested for. Half an hour later you send it off and you are done for the day.

You open your calendar to see what’s lined up for the weekend, and realise that you are meeting three of your school friends Saturday evening. Grinning from ear to ear you close the laptop and you are done for the week.

Sounds impossible?

Well, it’s not.

It’s very much doable if you dig your heels in, follow the roadmap I just shared and get ready to put in the work required.

So what are you waiting for? Follow the steps outlined here to manage your day like you are your own boss and lead a dream life full of freedom, fun and happiness.